White flowers at makeshift shrines and messages of support posted in a public square. A rainbow of folded paper cranes. Boxes of donated goods for those in need. Hongkongers’ responses to the Tai Po fire disaster – in which at least 159 people have died and 31 are still unaccounted for – have, on the surface, resembled similar community expressions of solidarity last seen during the 2019 protests. But beneath the surface, Hong Kong civil society is struggling to respond to this latest collective trauma in a city that has deeply changed in the past five years.

The cauterisation of Hong Kong’s civil society that has occurred under Beijing’s national security crackdown has meant that the types of grassroots activism that would traditionally have occurred in response to such a tragedy – as they would in any other open society – are no longer possible.

In the past, pro-democracy legislators would have grilled government officials in the legislative council: but in 2021 that changed when 47 pro-democracy politicians proposing to run in elections were charged with subversion, and later jailed. Only Beijing-approved “patriots” are now permitted to run for office, and all of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy political parties have since dissolved.

Freewheeling independent media outlets, such as Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper or online outlet Stand News, would have doggedly pursued investigative reporting to uncover corruption or mismanagement, and seek accountability for the fires. But those independent media outlets were forced to close, and their editors charged with sedition.

An array of civil society groups would have........

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